As the season comes to a close our Notts County FC columnist gives a run down of the team’s successful 2025-26 season, whilst also trying to cram in as many literature and poetry references as possible…
August: A month of three acts
At Newport, in the curtain raiser, we are losing to a team we have completely dominated. But we equalise. Jodie Jones scores and then goes off as the new manager Martin Paterson brings on so many subs it’s difficult for fans to understand who anyone is or what we are trying to do. Next, we lose three games in a row and it seems entirely clear that the new coach, tactics, recruitment and generally everything are bad, broken and doomed.
However, we then start to see improvement and green shoots. A home win against Shrewsbury, then a draw (Bromley) and then an away win (Tranmere), and the kind of end of match battling performance that was never happening last season. Finally, we get to transfer deadline day. As Samuel Beckett wrote in Waiting For Godot: “Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful.” Except, most of us are relieved that our main striker Alessana Jatta is still with us.
September: The rarest of times? A mid table season?
Maybe we all need it. Ordinary mind. Zen Notts. A classic ‘not turning up’ away at then league leaders Gillingham, but then a swashbuckling 4-0 win over Crawley at The Lane. Away to Crewe, our nemesis destination – we lose again. Mid-table – neither one nor the other. September was a ‘wondrous strange’.
October: All good, until it wasn’t
A month where we are unbeaten. It starts with a 3-1 win at home to Oldham and is followed by a smash and grab 1-0 win away at Barnet. Possession is nice, but winning is better. Then we’re off to Swindon, with the hosts knowing they would go top if they beat us. But we lead twice, and in the end it’s a draw. Back to Meadow Lane and the visit of Cambridge, who frustrated us, until our ‘real time pitch-side technical data team’ advised Paterson to bring on three subs who changed the dynamic and allowed a brace from the paradox himself Jatta.
November: So many questions
As has become our tradition, we exit the FA Cup at the first round to non-league Brackley. After that it’s a month of more questions than answers. What are we now? What is our goalkeeper Kelle Roos? Do we still hate Bristol Rovers? We win away to Cheltenham, draw at home to Harrogate and lose at home to Colchester. Then we win again 0-1 in Bristol, despite a 35th minute sending off for young Spurs loanee Tyrese Hall. Paterson’s post-match interview is a postmodern hyper-reflexive homage to himself. Deconstructing the conditions of his own possibility he says: “That win was nothing to do with me, that was all the players. But maybe I deserve that as well. But I’m not coming off anything, I need to work harder.”
December: So near and yet so far
This idiom is attributed mostly to an 1850 Alfred Tennyson poem – an elegy to grief. 175 years later, his enduring phrase can nonetheless reasonably apply to how December went for the Pies. This month was not quite the broken wheelbarrow, but more the nagging sense of a loose axle when it had seemed to be fixed. Two wins (at home to MK Dons and away to Grimsby), one defeat (away to Chesterfield) and two draws in tough games against promotion rivals (MK Dons and Walsall).
January: All was good, since New Year's Day
An abject home performance and a 0-1 home defeat to Accrington offered a shaky start to the year. But after them everything goes right for us. At Crawley, the returning Jodi Jones is viscerally sharper and curls in a superb opening goal. Jatta scores the second. Notts fan James Belshaw makes his debut and only a deflected free kick in the 94th minute denies a clean sheet to “one of our own.” Margaret Atwood has a poem called February featuring the line “get going on a little optimism around here.” That sounds about right.
February: The eternal recurrence of a gnat’s chuff
A month of three home wins (Gillingham, Barrow and 5-0 thumping of Tranmere), two losses (away to Shrewsbury and home to Grimsby) and a draw (away to Bromley). The top of league two is once again as tight as a gnat’s chuff. My understanding of the genealogy of this colloquialism is that it can refer to miserly behaviour or a state of very fine margins and restricted movement. When others drop points, Notts fail to capitalise. But when Notts drop points, others fail to widen the gap. Both can be true.
March: The ides of March
The month begins with an extra time winner from Jodi Jones at Walsall in front of the away fans. A header. Scenes and limbs. We follow this by losing at home to Chesterfield in a game where midfielder Ollie Norburn makes national news by getting sent off for throwing a boot. We hammer Accrington away 0-4, despite playing no strikers. Then we beat Cheltenham at home 5-2. A 3-0 away loss to an in-form Oldham is followed by beating second-bottom Harrogate 0-2 away. The tightness at the top of the table continues, as it’s not just us losing. The ship is steadied.
April: Play offs again
We lose against promotion rivals Salford, Cambridge and Barnet. We beat Newport and Colchester. In this season Notts were the sixth highest spenders on player budget and finished 5th in League 2. According to our model of sustainable growth, this is progress. Boring. Economic science. Predictable. There is nothing poetic, romantic or despairing to write about this. It just is what it is.
May: Ole Ole Ole Ole
Where to even begin? In the semi-final first leg against Chesterfield, we scored – on the break – from a press. What happened next made no sense to Notts fans who have lived the rollercoaster ride: Notts defended and defended. At home for the second leg the thing nobody even came close to thinking about was a 0-0 draw. But that’s what happened. Then we go and win 3-0 against Salford at Wembley. Notts County won the play offs without conceding a goal. Under the stewardship of Martin Paterson, and using the ‘real time data analytics model’ on the touchline which I was so sarcastic about at the start of this season, Notts turned up for the play off final against Beckham and Neville’s project and played, in every way, the perfect game. Edwin Way Teale once wrote “All things seem possible in May.” Well, they certainly do now! See you next month in League One.
You can read our regular Notts County, Nottingham Forest and Mansfield Town FC football columns online from August onwards at leftlion.co.uk/sport
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